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PAST EXHIBITION
Christina Mazzalupo
Prognosis: Doom
November 15, 2012–January 5, 2013
Mixed Greens is thrilled to announce Christina Mazzalupo’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. When faced with an exhibition that would straddle December 21, 2012 (the end of the Mayan Calendar) Mazzlupo felt compelled to research the history of doomsaying and the origins of the word apocalypse.
Scouring the Internet, Mazzalupo found centuries of religious figures, cult leaders, psychics, and media personalities proclaiming the world was going to end. The ones she focused on most wholeheartedly were the people who could attach a date and cause to the apocalypse. Would it be a natural disaster? Alien invasion? Plague? The resulting art consists of paintings on classification tags, drawings, and videos that tell a story of humanity’s fixation on Doomsday through a lens of humor.
Dozens of tiny paintings are executed on paper tags—the type you might expect to see in a science lab. Mazzalupo’s systematic clustering of painted “doomsayers” continues her ongoing fascination with prototyping types, kinds, and systems. Beginning with the Montanists (an early prophetic movement founded in 156AD) and ending with Harold Camping (the man who predicted the rapture twice in 2011), Mazzalupo’s findings categorize the flawed predictions of well-known and lesser-known proselytizers. Until viewing her drawings, many might not know Camping had already predicted the end of the world three times between 1994 and 1995. Viewers will also encounter Mazzalupo’s classified “types of doom” that include fire, meteorites, global warming, plague, and a black hole, just to name a few.
In related work, media headlines appear in graphite drawings. Gathered over the course of a year, nearly one hundred headlines portray a news cycle that perpetuates and reinforces fear, focusing on the uncertainty and apprehension resulting from environmental, political, and cultural change. Alarm resounds, but Mazzalupo is careful to pepper the distressing news with positive developments that come only from change.
Finally, the exhibition is rounded out by two videos created in collaboration with Karen Curtiss and Christian Svanes-Kolding: one text-based and the other documentary-style footage of a Brooklyn resident preparing for the end of the world. In the text-based video, set to the music from Harry Partch’s album Delusion of the Fury, Mazzalupo reveals all the topics she researched while developing this exhibition. In the other video, a Brooklyn woman is interviewed about her preparations for the end of the world, her survival kit, and what it means to bring a child into a culture fixated on seemingly inevitable doom.
Christina Mazzalupo received her MFA from New York University. Upon graduation, her work was featured in a White Room at White Columns, New York City. Since then, she has shown in group exhibitions in many cities including Monroe, LA; Brighton, England; Olympia, WA; New Paltz, NY; Purchase, NY; Hudson, NY; Santa Monica, CA; Houston, TX; Fairfield, CT; and Badajoz, Spain. She has been written about in various publications and websites including Art 21’s blog, artcat.com, zingmagazine, and Art Actuel. Her first solo exhibition was with Mixed Greens in 2004.
For more information, please visit christinamazzalupo.com
Download Press Release
Mixed Greens is thrilled to announce Christina Mazzalupo’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. When faced with an exhibition that would straddle December 21, 2012 (the end of the Mayan Calendar) Mazzlupo felt compelled to research the history of doomsaying and the origins of the word apocalypse.
Scouring the Internet, Mazzalupo found centuries of religious figures, cult leaders, psychics, and media personalities proclaiming the world was going to end. The ones she focused on most wholeheartedly were the people who could attach a date and cause to the apocalypse. Would it be a natural disaster? Alien invasion? Plague? The resulting art consists of paintings on classification tags, drawings, and videos that tell a story of humanity’s fixation on Doomsday through a lens of humor.
Dozens of tiny paintings are executed on paper tags—the type you might expect to see in a science lab. Mazzalupo’s systematic clustering of painted “doomsayers” continues her ongoing fascination with prototyping types, kinds, and systems. Beginning with the Montanists (an early prophetic movement founded in 156AD) and ending with Harold Camping (the man who predicted the rapture twice in 2011), Mazzalupo’s findings categorize the flawed predictions of well-known and lesser-known proselytizers. Until viewing her drawings, many might not know Camping had already predicted the end of the world three times between 1994 and 1995. Viewers will also encounter Mazzalupo’s classified “types of doom” that include fire, meteorites, global warming, plague, and a black hole, just to name a few.
In related work, media headlines appear in graphite drawings. Gathered over the course of a year, nearly one hundred headlines portray a news cycle that perpetuates and reinforces fear, focusing on the uncertainty and apprehension resulting from environmental, political, and cultural change. Alarm resounds, but Mazzalupo is careful to pepper the distressing news with positive developments that come only from change.
Finally, the exhibition is rounded out by two videos created in collaboration with Karen Curtiss and Christian Svanes-Kolding: one text-based and the other documentary-style footage of a Brooklyn resident preparing for the end of the world. In the text-based video, set to the music from Harry Partch’s album Delusion of the Fury, Mazzalupo reveals all the topics she researched while developing this exhibition. In the other video, a Brooklyn woman is interviewed about her preparations for the end of the world, her survival kit, and what it means to bring a child into a culture fixated on seemingly inevitable doom.
Christina Mazzalupo received her MFA from New York University. Upon graduation, her work was featured in a White Room at White Columns, New York City. Since then, she has shown in group exhibitions in many cities including Monroe, LA; Brighton, England; Olympia, WA; New Paltz, NY; Purchase, NY; Hudson, NY; Santa Monica, CA; Houston, TX; Fairfield, CT; and Badajoz, Spain. She has been written about in various publications and websites including Art 21’s blog, artcat.com, zingmagazine, and Art Actuel. Her first solo exhibition was with Mixed Greens in 2004.
For more information, please visit christinamazzalupo.com
Download Press Release